This year marks the tenth year of holiday covers, and it is as triumphant and light-hearted as ever. Joel and I decided on a Boyz II Men / traditional mashup of two songs by the same name. For the first time ever, we've introduced a bit of extra R&B flare into our tradition.
We hope you enjoy and happy holidays!
Love Will Find You is about opening yourself to possibility. It’s about the moments of non-striving and reflection in the unending pursuit of happiness and meaning in the modern world—about creating a space in your life for love through reverence and gratitude.
What started as a run-of-the-mill live performance recording grew into a new beast thanks to the creative minds of StrudelBrand. After a last minute videographer cancellation, Max was put in contact with the local duo, and a moving moment of serendipity quickly blossomed into a lasting friendship.
In the handful of videos recorded live that night at Lethbridge’s institution for live music, the Owl Acoustic Lounge, Strudel wanted to showcase more of the vibrant and picturesque city they had all come to love and call home. The results speak for themselves.
Watch above or click here to watch on YouTube.
Click here for all of my links.
It’s hard to believe how much can change in a year. It can really creep up on you. I think celebrating anniversaries can be very grounding for this reason. Having a cyclical point from which to re-examine your actions and achievements can be quite jarring and, at times, discouraging, but ultimately provides a valuable insight into your world. This album happened over the course of multiple years; through a pandemic, and three moves. It changed form and order numerous times, as did we all.
It feels like life is hurtling along still and it is so nice to have something for me to return to when things get a bit out of hand. I hope you have enjoyed listening over the past year through everything you are experiencing and I invite you to take another listen through (or a first listen through) in the next few days if you are feeling it. Maybe you will hear or feel something that you didn’t or haven’t before. Maybe it will feel as spiritual an experience to you as it still does to me.
Thank you all for being here and connecting through your presence. I hope the rest of your day is magical.
M
Joel and I had quite a fun time making this one bigger, vibe-ier, gush-ier, and dumber than any year prior.
The theme was karaoke chic this year.
I hope you enjoy this more special of tracks and happy holidays to you all!
Listen here.
For those of your who missed it, I moved to the Netherlands (Utrecht, to be exact) in August to complete my masters in sound design. As you can tell, that didn’t go according to plan for a number of reasons.
You may notice some differences around here. I am (finally) updating my website again and have recently shaved my head and am thus feeling fresh and aerodynamic. It feels representative of some of the changes I am going through.
Anyway. Here I am, back at it again in various musical pursuits. I hope to reconnect with you all by playing more shows and releasing some more music very soon. I am a bit behind on this year’s holiday release so will likely only release it on Bandcamp and Soundcloud this year, but it will be on streaming services eventually, as I plan to release another album of festive originals.
I hope you’re all doing well and staying healthy. Thanks as always for coming along with me on this journey, thanks for listening to Sojourns, and let’s hang out again soon!
I am very excited to be releasing my first full-length album of originals, Sojourns. Out now (virtually) anywhere you listen. Check the links below this post for places that might work for you!
Releasing a bigger body of work is such a strange journey. You really have to carry and care for all of the pieces of it at all times, even if you can’t aways give them all of the attention they deserve. The oldest song on this album, Solstice, started its journey in the summer of 2017. I knew it was destined for more than my tipsy bedroom recording and mix job. The most recent, Wading, came with inspiration from the one and only Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar score, the sound of a new virtual piano I had just bought, and a yearning to try something new. The idea grew from the feeling that a crucial link was missing between Shadows and Patience. From start to finish, the writing for the album stretched from the summer of 2017 to 2021, with the bulk being completed in 2018 and 2019.
Needless to say, I’m very excited to finally have these representations in the world for others to hear. I poured a lot of time and love into them and can only hope, as a creative, that my intentions have formed themselves into something with which you can identify, and just maybe something that speaks to you and connects with who you are. Hopefully they filled in a little gap about something you hadn’t thought about, or helped you piece together another segment of this ever-changing puzzle we move through together.
If you want to read more about the songs on the album, be sure to check out the blog section of my site: maxhopkins.ca/blog.
Happy listening and thanks for being around and being you.
Max xo
Sempervirens has been out in the world for over a month! I hope you’ve had the chance to listen and have been able to connect with it. My biggest goal with music is connecting with people. I think that is the most powerful thing about all art as well.
This song came out on the last day I ever saw my grandpa. It is a song about ancestry and marked the beginning of a time in my life with no remaining grandparents. It will always hold a special place for me. As I’ve made my way through life, I have started to appreciate the things that will not always be there. Something I love so much about recordings is that they are like a timestamp. All of the elements of the recording were moments in time, digitally immortalized. For my own music they also carry all of the moments from conception of the song to my current relationship with it. I feel so lucky to have these memories and emotions intertwined with this recording.
I knew it would be hard to find visuals that matched the same feeling of grandeur that the song carries. I love Gabriel’s immersive environments that he makes, and was so excited when he agreed to let me use his work as my album art. I was even more excited when he said he wanted to make a lyric video in said environment. It feels so otherworldly and timeless. I couldn’t be happier.
I hope you will enjoy this immersive adventure into the lyrics of one of my favourite songs I have written and will continue to find ways to identify and connect with your surroundings.
Stay well, and find the lyric video here.
Sempervirens is a song about ancestry. It grew during a time of heavy moving in my life, both physically and emotionally. From the Latin semper (always) and virens (flourishing, green), it conjures images of the ceaseless line that interweaves and connects all humans.
Full of contemplation and brimming with signs of artistic growth since Vestiges, this song gives a taste of a new mentality and artistic momentum moving out of the past two years of the pandemic. Sempervirens ushers in the sounds of a new album, set for spring of 2022.
Pre-save the single on Spotify here.
Read more about the song and it’s conception here.
My new holiday original Good Ol’ Fashioned Cheer is out Friday! It has been such a fun time making this track and I am feeling very happy with how it turned out. I hope you enjoy my eighth year of holiday releases and second year of holiday originals.
It wouldn’t have been the same without the work of my good friends Joel and Richard who added so much feel and dimension to the track. A big thanks also to Phenix, Jon, Ava, Ildiko, Nicole, Naomi, and Olivia for adding your touch to it.
Good Ol’ Fashioned Cheer is a tribute to the Christmas songs of old with a modern twist. Eclectic yet familiar and bursting with cheer and nostalgia. Bruno Major meets Theo Katzman meets Stevie Wonder.
I’ve been working on my music quietly all year and am excited to announce a few releases for the next half year or so!
As expected, my annual holiday song will be out some time in November this year. I finished writing it in early August and am very excited for you to hear it. It’s like if Bruno Major and Stevie Wonder’s music had a baby and its teacher was Theo Katzman.
The first single from my album should be out in early 2022, with the album following a few months later. The single is called Sempervirens and means evergreen, or always living in Latin. (There is actually a video of me playing it at Beatnik Salon in Banff, mere days after I finished writing it in late 2019. Check it out here!)
A friend from the Digital Audio Arts program at the University of Lethbridge is mixed the single as well as five more tracks from the album. Shae is working away on number three as we speak. Check out some of his work here.
Thanks for sticking with me and I hope that we will all be together again soon.
Stay safe
Max
Art by Broadhead Design
The holiday album that Joel and I created, O, the Holidays are Near! comes out today and I am so excited for you to finally hear it. Along with this album there is also new merch available on my bandcamp page and two music videos made by yours truly. It is too much festivity for one person to handle, so I thought I would share it with you!
Buy/listen to O, the Holidays are Near! here
Listen on Spotify here
Buy merch here
Watch videos here
All my links here
I hope you’re all surviving and staying well in the midst of this debilitating social blockade and global pandemic. I’m always here to talk if you need someone. Send me an email through the form in the contact section, if so!
I realized as I was about to type up a bit on the new Holiday album from Joel and I that I haven’t updated my LATEST section for about a year. Pathetic. I have been working non-stop on music except for this last month when I have been working non-stop on coffee and promoting my music. I have this holiday album, another full LP, and an EP in the works. All should be out within a year or so. It’s exhausting and I feel spent as a songwriter, but so excited and energized as a mixer and performer. Music is so versatile like that. I get to switch lanes through these cycles of creativity and managerial work that keeps things interesting.
My new stuff is different. I have some very folky stuff and some very synth-y stuff coming your way soon. It is all very me, but just with a different confidence and sound palette. I think these are some of my best songs yet and I am so excited for you to ride this ride with me. Thanks for sticking around and let’s talk soon.
Max - Nov 30, 2020
A quick look at things I’ve done this decade:
Started writing songs
Started and completed music degree in Digital Audio Arts
Studied classical vocal technique and performed in staged operas for several years
Conducted sponsored research in sound-mapping and soundscape composition
Released three EPs independently
And this year:
One Extended Play, Vestiges
Six new songs, including Sempervirens
Plenty of Collaboration with other artists, shops, and institutions including: Cottonwood Records, Cairn Seven, Bandwidth, In Rehearsal, Beatnik Salon, Sonder
Five music videos
Sempervirens | Lost | Freedom
Magic Schoolbus | Thousand Year Journey
A trace; visible evidence of something that is no longer present.
Vestiges is a rite of passage: an echo of our collective wisdom, a tribute to our fore-family, and an acknowledgement of the inseparable confluence. Born of youthful epiphanies and wielding a sophic nonchalance, Vestiges is a revealing look into the lasting power and influence of our personal and collective histories.
This EP is a collection of songs about an important time in my existence during which I made several profound realizations which altered my outlook and trajectory. Words of wisdom seep in from the likes of the ancients all the way up to personal friends, both current and past. It is woven with exploratory (and at times, jarring) harmonic and rhythmic turns to illustrate the sometimes disorienting epiphanies or cycles which life offers, and hints at the growing repertoire of musical appreciation and interest in existential philosophy developed during that period.
The concept for the album art was devised by Kasia Sosnowski, who hinged the focal point of her work on the first lines from “For a Friend.” — I leave a part of myself with you, and you do you so with me; a seed from which our lives will grow – grow in new directions we would otherwise never know.
In this phrase and others lies the heart of Vestiges.
In each interaction I truly believe that we leave a piece of ourselves with each other. In each friendship we leave and acquire a mannerism, a way of saying something, or a lens through which to view the world. We are the collective brushstrokes of our loved ones, our influences, and the people with which we surround ourselves. These are the indelible marks of which I am speaking. These are the indelible Vestiges we impress upon the world that endure throughout the centuries, across languages, and over spans of thousands of kilometers.
Read more about the album and each individual track by clicking on the title (you will be redirected to my audio/composition website, maxhopkins.org):
Vestiges | Overture | Lost | Freedom | For a Friend
